Are the Kids of AFOLs affected by their parents' addiction?

I was amused by the conversation that @cheshirecat and @legofantexas were having in the VIP thread about how much lego is actually in their house. Both of them described a house bursting at the seams with lego, which is exactly our house. I have a lego room upstairs and in the basement and the rest of the basement is full of unopened sets and collections I have purchased off Craigslist but have yet to go through. My son (10 yrs old) routinely gets out my larger sets and plays with them and has access all the pieces, parts and minifigs her could ever want or use.

It got me to thinking about whether my kids, or kids of others who are as addicted as I am, will never fully appreciate the brick as I do. We have the collection divided up into our collection and collections for re-sale, but nonetheless, the amount of lego in our house is staggering. I am always mindful when I crack open a UCS or Modular to build with my son as how my anticipation was for the large sets when I was a kid back in the early 80's. While I always make sure my kids appreciate what they have and where it came from, I wonder if the sheer exposure to my collection will possible stunt his love for the hobby ultimately. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Comments

Anything that you have in abundance isn't appreciated as much as when it is rare.

If everyone had a Rolex Watch, would anyone care?

I recall the amazement just 3 years ago when I cracked open UCS Imperial Shuttle and started building it, it was *epic*, in a way that building large sets today aren't. It was my first big set, it was my reintroduction to LEGO after 25 years away from it. Nothing from my childhood in the 80's compares to a set like that.

Because I've got tons of them, I've become used to them, they have become "normal".

I've noticed my 8 year old son has been affected by this as well. He received two Ninjago sets for Christmas, the helicopter and the new Mech Dragon. While he was excited, he still hasn't finished the Mech Dragon, it is half finished, the helicopter remains unopened.

He has so much to play with, he seems to pick something up, then get distracted by something else, then move on to something else.

Frankly, I think I've done him a disservice by giving him so much, he can't see the forest for the trees, instead of loving and really enjoying a few sets, he has hundreds and they are all disposable in his mind.

My current plan is to cut way, way back on the number of sets that we keep, I used to buy everything in a line, now maybe just 2 or 3 sets. We need to take apart a ton of stuff and put all the parts in buckets, get the shelves cleared off, make it easier for him to take care of and enjoy fewer things.

I also notice that I'm guilty of this myself, not just with LEGO, but with all material stuff in my life. I have enjoyed great success in life, I was able to buy a new UCS Falcon from Woot the other day, just on a whim. A lot of people here would be over the moon to be able to buy and build that set. Logically I understand that. Emotionally, I think I've forgotten that.

My new year's resolution for 2014 is to "de-stuff" my life, more "things" have not brought me happiness. You know what makes me happy? Last night I took the family out to dinner. Nothing fancy, we went to Olive Garden, had a nice time. Then we went home and all piled onto the couch together and watched a movie together.

@LegoFanTexas- You and I sound a lot alike. My weakness is large lots off craigslist. I just picked up another today, much to the arched eyebrows of my better half. I too am trying to de-clutter/stuff my life.

My son plays with the sets incessantly. There is always a Hoth/Endor/Courissant battle raging on our dining room table. But he also does not dive into the sets he gets as gifts because they are more commonplace. I think I will also add a resolution to make sure that he and I spend a lot more time building and appreciating together.

Brilliant post. I don't have a son but do have a nephew. Not yet 5 and he has a "collection" in excess of 200 sets. Not all in his possession yet but I've bought to much already. For Christmas from me he had all of the last line of City Police sets. It's to much. He has built them all himself which I'm proud of but the police station would have been enough. Maybe the minifig pack. He can make his own "robber vehicles" from all the mixed up bricks he has. Job done.

I used to judge my success by material things. Working stupid hours. All to chase more and more money each month. For me it took my health taking a header to make me realise all the work and money didn't count for shit. No way would anything like Fairy Bricks have crossed my mind. Working for free? No chance. I would probably have laughed at someone doing it. In my opinion I was wrong. I was an idiot, muppet or any other word you want to put in there. I thought I was happy then. Maybe I was but despite the difficulties of life now I know I'm much happier now.

There is so much lego in our house my kids just think it is normal at 2 and 6 they don't get the cost so just assume that what they want arrives etc. my daughter has had all the friends sets to date but this year with the princess sets coming out it is time to pick and chose and she will be getting less, maybe in the hope it means more, not that she doesn't love the sets she has, it s just there is so much of it, certainly compared to what I had as a kid. But not for nought it isn't just a lego thing, in general I think kids now have so much more 'stuff' and a great disposition to a disposable lifestyle than we did, but then again so did I compared to my parents and so the cycle goes.

I have a 11 year old daughter, she had a LEGO phase but it has already passed. She liked large models, built the create houses and 1 of the two tower of the TB when she was 9 but since then not much, had to finish my self #5771 after 3 months and it started collection dust unbuilt. I do not know if she lost interest because of always seeing LEGO everywhere and it became the norm or just that it is not her thing and moved on to other things.Last year, while thanking the friend of a friend for helping me out with some Whisky, I got his sons (6 and 8) a couple LEGO sets (2 Speedorz and a City set) and they were over the moon. They were so happy it was a huge set for them (a bit more than 500 pieces), screaming and running around their house. They started building the set within a minute.When I saw that I thought that is how Kids are supposed to react :)

Seriously like this thread. I too have a house bursting with Lego. My youngest son thinks he lives in paradise as he has so many sets to play with. He is very lucky as he has the opportunity to play with some large sets. That said, we often play with the smaller sets together and have more fun with just some simple 2 x3 bricks. I too fully understand and agree with the above comments as having tons of stuff does not bring happiness. As a dad, I hope my son remembers fondly the time we spent together building and playing and that this is far more important than how much the collection is worth or whether the collection is complete, mint and boxed... This is what and how I hope my son is affected by my Lego addiction.

They were so happy it was a huge set for them (a bit more than 500 pieces), screaming and running around their house. They started building the set within a minute.When I saw that I thought that is how Kids are supposed to react :)

Yep, it is...

Just the other day, my wife had a patient who had to bring her 4 year old son into the office. I happened to be there and he was playing with some LEGO, I asked him what he liked and he said "STAR WARS!". I asked his mom when she was done how into LEGO they were and she replied, "We have a few small sets that I've gotten as gifts, but it is so expensive, we just haven't gotten very much".

I went into the back office and picked up a damaged box #8084 Stormtrooper Battle Pack (I have various small sets like that almost everywhere) and gave it to him.

I think I made his whole year, he was running around in circles, just as you describe. His mom thanked me and said it was his first Star Wars set.

I'm sure I've mentioned it before but this seems like quite a good place to report what one of my young sons (they're nearly 7 now, but I think he was 5) said to me one day in one of those earnest moments:

... But not for nought it isn't just a Lego thing, in general I think kids now have so much more 'stuff' and a great disposition to a disposable lifestyle than we did, but then again so did I compared to my parents and so the cycle goes.

I think this is a big part of it, my childhood collection of Lego (from the 80's) fits in a 15 litre tub. Mean while my still 5 year old son has enough to fill at least one 50 litre tub, plus access to all my sets. With this comes the understanding that my son will probably not value Lego the same way I did or do. That said maybe the time we spend together building and playing with Lego will be what he remembers and values as an adult, more so then the bricks themselves.

I think it really depends. We definitely have a fair amount of Lego. My ds still went nuts on Christmas morning when he opened the one set he had been waiting months for.

I agree that kids that have 'more' Lego may not appreciate the Lego they have, but their are trade-offs. My son can create some cool items with our spare Lego. Because of the Lego we have, as a family we were able to turn the Constitution into our own holiday train, with each kid working on a section. We work together on various seasonal sets.

My 7 year old gets $1/week for allowance. He does get Christmas and Birthday money from relatives. He puts some away for college.

The rest generally goes to Lego, but I've had very long conversations with my son and we have an entire color-coded system, and a list we keep on green/yellow/red lego sets on his list.

I've taken him clearance hunting and taught him the point of a set clearanced at from $80 to $50 is only a good deal if you actually really want the set. The summer toy clearance, we walked away from a number of clearances, because they were not on his color-coded list and he wanted to save his money.

My point is that even with a child having a large amount of Lego... he still gets highly excited for that one set he wants. He has other advantages from using the Lego he has. I definitely go through in high detail about cost, sales, prioritization, clearances, whether a set is worth it, the value of even waiting to build his last Christmas set, so that he has a really cool set to build in a month, and enjoy the toys he has opened and built.

Point- I think every situation has pros and cons, and how one spins things and teaches things makes a difference.

I too keep a few small sets/polybags around my work office. a while back one of our co-workers was having a baby shower and brought in her son with her as well - who was probably about 5. After sitting there watching his mom open all these gifts for his new baby sister (he was to that point the first/only child), he was pretty excited when I gave him a little polybag set to play with and keep.

I usually give away a lot of LEGO store freebies - polys, posters, yoda ears, etc to kids in the neighborhood when I get them. It's always fun to see their excitement.

I can relate to this overall problem as well. Both my daughters have access to play with a ridiculous amount of sets - all of friends, lots of city, my modulars, etc. I truly don't think they appreciate it as much at all as I did. That said, I don't think it would be their "thing" anyway. My son is just a little over 1 right now but when it's time I'm going to try hard to make sure he doesn't feel spoiled by all the LEGO in the house. I will give him "his" sets that he can do with as he pleases, but try and keep them to a level where he will actually have to pick and choose which ones he wants for Christmas/birthday, etc. Additional things that I buy for me I will try and make sure his access to is more limited and controlled - not to protect them so much as to not spoil him. Access to Dad's large collection can be used more as a privilege/reward, or as a medium for us to spend time together. That's my plan anyway, we'll see how it works out.

One thing I've discovered is that as important as the total amount of "stuff" is also the concept of not getting it immediately. Kids are so programmed now that nearly everything is instant gratification. So, even if the kid has a large amount of total LEGO, if you make them wait until a birthday or Christmas, or they have saved up some allowance, or whatever other reason, then they will appreciate it more and be more excited about it as compared to just getting it immediately. Of course the flipside is that you have to listen to them beg and plead and whine about it in the interim. ;-)

While we too have a house overflowing with LEGO, even though we're only in this one for a year, my 9-year-old is obsessively scanning the latest catalog in excitement and planning for her April birthday.

I don't know what the difference is but I have tried to keep LEGO to birthdays and Christmas. This rule has had to be bent on numerous occasions because of the volume building up. But when I feel the need for more room in the closet, rather than giving her the LIon Temple at the top of her list I'll pull out a non-priority or duplicate set that I've bought for the parts. I might do it when we're having people over so that the kids can all build together, or make it a family thing as the time we raced to each build an identical set. CMFs have been used as rewards for doing all her homework for a week, or to cheer her up on a bad day. Polybags find their way into her activity bag on car or plane trips.

So my daughter was ecstatic to finally get the Dolphin Boat she'd been wanting for months, completely surprised by the Funhouse from Nana, and amazed that Santa had managed to bring her some of the new wave of Friends sets before their release date.

She has a far from extravagant allowance of 2 euros/week and is given our VIP points as a LEGO allowance so that we have a ready answer when she wants something in a LEGO store. She can save for the big sets she wants but generally opts to purchase small sets and count on birthdays for big ones.

I can't tell you that these things are why she's generally still so excited about LEGO, she's also a rather immature 9-year-old and I think she'd be really into LEGO even if we were completely uninterested. Also she is a child who is constantly bought books and is still excited to get them as presents, she's even very happy to receive clothes, it just may be how she is.

Like everyone else here -- and probably more than the average -- we have LEGO all over the house.

My eldest is just shy of 5 years old. She still gets excited about every LEGO set she receives, and gazes in wonderment at "Daddy's LEGO", in spite of there being no shortage. Part of this may be a function of her young age, but I hope that some of it is because we are imparting on her the need to treasure what she has.

We went as a family to donate the FairyBricks/Brickset LEGO sets to our local Children's Hospital during the holidays (long overdue trip report coming soon). She has a grasp of what it means when we tell her that we are fortunate and there are others that are less fortunate, and that we occasionally will donate to charities because of this. When she saw me picking things from out of my collection to donate, she also asked if she should donate some of her sets.

Growing up poor myself, I'm anxious that our children won't have the same appreciation of things that I did, and frankly, I think it's understandable if they won't. This extends to all things, not just LEGO. We'll definitely try our best to ensure they don't take things for granted. The LEGO's not going anywhere though :P

I look forward to hearing how those with older kids are managing the obsessive, compulsive, hoarding aspects of the hobby with preserving the joy and interest of it for their kids.

I know it isn't always great but, like a lot of parents, I just get a bit carried away spoiling the kids, certainly with lego as I see it a something that will last a lifetime and promotes creativity and learning, a bit like books I never object to buying a book :)

I do know that rather than the bigger set my daughter loves collecting the MiniFigs and we spend hours sorting through them and hunting for them and news about the next series etc and as for the time spent mixing up the spares... That is the value.

Lego is all over my house and we haven't been doing it that long...most of my sets stay on display (Lord of the Rings and such) but we have plenty of minifigures and Legos for my daughters and I to play with. Even my wife has a small collection of minifigures (she likes anything unusual like the gingerbread man and Panda). Any history related minifigures or sets wind up in my classroom. It s where I keep the Black Pearl and my minifigure timeline. My students were happy to see my stash of polybag eagles and such I picked up as they know I'll use them as prizes for the rest of the school year. So yeah Lego addiction impacts everyone around you :)

I keep all the sets I buy out of sight until they are given as a gift or earned as a reward, so the immersion problem is not there. Pretty much my only buying criteria is opportunism based on heavy discounting, so I have multiples of a lot of random sets and very few big signature sets. I will easily drop $200 on a bunch of stuff that is 70% off whether I like it or not but I will never buy Orthanc at full price even though it looks awesome. Price per piece is my only rule. But that generates a high storage consumption per dollar spent. My problem is figuring out how to organize parts for MOCing. My son takes his sets apart within weeks or days to customize and cannibalize, which is great by me (I have only decreed a few sets that have to stay built because they are rare and we lack backups), but I haven't found a way to transition those parts into organized storage, and I really don't like bin dumps, it's too frustrating when I want to build. So they are all in their own separate bins semi-disassembled which takes up crazy space, and also isn't so helpful in obtaining parts for MOCing. We also lack a dedicated building space. The great thing about Speedorz is the high replay value and minimal space requirements. It's too bad they are not doing well at retail, kids are missing out! I also rotate built sets through... they stay in big clear bins of which a selection are accessible to him, and from time to time I switch bins. Out goes Dino T Rex chopper and in comes the City Mine. That keeps things fresh and costs nothing. It's like a whole new set to him after a few months out of view, he's as eager to play with it as when he first built it.

Like many of us, my childhood wasn't bathed in LEGO but nor was I without. And as such, my fondest memories were of a few specific sets and then all the various things I would create. Thirty years later and I'm drowning in MISB boxes and haven't MOCed a single thing in decades. My kids, I think, are still a bit young to be forging their LEGO memories but I have to imagine that theirs will definitely be different, not necessarily worse, than mine. My 2 1/2 yo wandered into my lego room for the first time ever this past week and that look, the open mouth, wide eyed, incredulous look on his face will stay with me forever. I hope he grows to love LEGO like I have, but I don't lose much sleep on it. So far, he has had a bigger LEGO impact on me than me on him as I never knew Duplo as a kid but now can't pass it up. :o)

Though not yet a big factor in my kids' lives, LEGO is a cornerstone (or anchor) in my marriage. I love the looks I get from my wife when I tell her not to go crazy at Wegmans (groceries) on those lean weeks all while I crack open the multiple boxes of Lone Ranger sets just delivered from Amazon. :o)

This is a subject I have been wrestling with in my mind for awhile now. My son is 3.5 and been playing with regular Lego for a few months now and is thrilled by the simplest polybag or Chima Speedorz and has just a handful of sets none bigger than a City Great Vehicle. In a few months we will be back in our 'permanent' address in Texas where I have at least 10 '10xxx' sets packed away along with quite a few other large ones I am quite anxious to get into. I am worried that when he gets a taste of things like the Death Star he will find his sets inadequate or boring. At the same time I want to build with him as much as possible and spend time with him and not just pack Daddys Lego away in a closet or build with it just after bedtime. Don't really have an answer yet and just thinking out loud. I have enjoyed reading the responses in this thread quite a bit so far.

Hi everyone.My son is 11 now, and I came out of my dark age 3 years before he was born so he has been brought up by an AFOL and I would say this has been a positive experience for both of us. I am a collector and minor MOC'er. I think it is important to allow your child to develop his own play style and interests. Although having loads of Star Wars Lego around clearly influenced my son, it is not something I feel ashamed of especially as, like most parents, we try to give our kids opportunities to develop varied interests. Lego is a great tool to enable this as whatever interest your child has Lego can be introduced as part of creative play in that area. The best times for me have been when we have built together or I have built an MOC for him, or he has built a MOC for me.I'm on a tight budget and sometimes I struggle to justify to myself spending money on Lego, but I work hard for my wages and my son has been brought up to see that if he saves and studies well, he can also receive his rewards whether that is a new Lego set or something else he is into. Now he's 11 I feel sure he is standing on the precipice of a dark age ( he's just bought a new skateboard with his savings) but he still thinks Lego is cool and is very comfortable with his dad being into Lego.

I am conscious of this issue too. My 2 young sons (4&2) have more Lego now than I did at the end of my childhood.

I made an effort to scale back the amount of Lego they got this Christmas, limiting it to a couple of decent-sized sets each. They were stoked with them, but now the sets are broken and figs scattered all over their room. I'm hoping they grow out of it and start to look after their Lego a bit better.

I think I was the same - most of my early sets have broken and damaged parts, whereas sets I received when I was older were taken care of a lot better - I used to have an intimate knowledge of my parts and figs, something which my boys have no idea about at this stage.

Fingers crossed they start to take care of their Lego as much as I'm doing! I'm constantly picking up figs and parts so they don't get lost - especially the rare ones. I'm still mourning the loss of IronFist from their superhero collection :(

Lots of interesting points and seemingly lots of people realising the same thing. As said in the other thread, I think I have two concerns.

Firstly, I'm genuinely worried that they're just going to get bored of LEGO through over exposure. That old saying "familiarity breeds contempt" kind of rings true. Not happened yet, they both had sets at Christmas and they built them straight away and genuinely loved them, my 7 year old beamed and leapt about when he opened the technic rescue helicopter that he didn't expect at all. But something inside me thinks the amount they have just must make everything that bit less special.

Secondly, can we really just keep giving them more and more. I've always worked on the basis that when they are old enough the amount of lego will be brilliant for their mocs etc. That at that point all (well most, or maybe some!) of the sets can be broken up and just used as parts. (You can see I'm not an out and out collector!) At the moment they basically have a different box for each theme and then if things get broken in the box at least you know where the parts are. But even at 5 and 7 the number of boxes they've got is crazy. SW, Dino, City (a few boxes), LOTR, my old castle, space (a number of boxes for MTron, Blacktron and Blacktron 2, Fututron), TMNT, TLR, Chima, Train, City Space, Atlantis, Arctic and Agents. Plus a few of the same boxes filled with loose parts (mostly my old lego plus polybags that end up in 'general population' and about 20 RUBs with sorted parts. On top of that we have a number of big technic sets that i dont fancy taking apart but would fill a box on their own, or just not fit at all. Then one gets in to a new theme: for example i sold my 7 year old a copy of 6195 Neptune Discovery Lab so now he wants to collect the other aquanauts sets. Seriously, they're only 5 and 7, I would hope they have a good few years left of Birthday and Christmas presents but its really getting ridiculous - I've got at least four main presents sorted out with sets sat in the loft!

Fascinating thread. I came out of my dark age when my son was 8; we were building together and I remembered the treasured '70s Technic sets in the loft. He's 16 now and into other things, although he never entirely lost his interest in Lego and still enjoys Architecture sets, among other things. He's watched my own collection (sets and MOCs) grow inexorably ever since with a mixture of pride and befuddlement. He was never embarassed, though, and was always pleased to show his friends the latest build even as a teenager who wasn't that into it himself.

Whenever I'd ask him if he was teased about having a dad who 'played with Lego' he always replied that the only people who did so weren't worth knowing.

@Cheshirecat - You are brave in that your kids are allowed to play with your old stuff. My son's best day with Lego is when I agreed to get out my entire classic space collection and set it up on the dining room table. There were two rules: 1) no friends (sometimes their respect for the lego is less than stellar) and 2) Dad's lego doesn't leave the dining room (he has a habit of assimilating things in to his bins mysteriously).

He loved it, partially because, let's face it, classic space rocks. But more importantly, he knows how important those sets are to me and knows how much care I take/took of them. It was a really big deal for him to play with them. It was pretty cool.

In fairness my old lego was really mine and my brothers and arrived in one large unsorted mess from my parents house. The only time i get stressed is when they have friends over (because as you say, they just don't get it) and boxes form different themes start to get mixed up. Then I can feel my levels of unrest rising.

My wife brought me out of my dark ages with the Emerald Night. My second train was the red passenger train which my 3 year old son quickly took over as his own. By the time i got my hands on the Maersk, he was 4 and he was all over it. I pulled out my loose childhood lego, but the plastic was too brittle and quickly snapped. This was not acceptable!His ability to build flipped a switch in me and I learned to enjoy building vicariously through him. Now, my daughter is just about 4 and has embraced Friends. She's building the school on her own and loves earning new sets. So we really have the best of both worlds! With that, we are doing our best to limit the collecting to different themes. City, Friends, Disney Princess, are easy to stick to and play well with each other.We have built a rewards system around lego and it works great. They earn tokens for chores, random acts of kindness, or good reports from school. Combining that with birthday fun money from the relatives and they can pick things to buy from our stockpile. They are getting really good at holding off for bigger things and have even decided to use their funds to buy sets for toys for tots and the like when they have extra tokens left over.All that being said, in two short years, we have more sets then they will ever buy. I do minor reselling to pick up more sets for them, but I am certainly getting carried away. Interestingly, my wife hasn't said anything about the master bedroom closet half full of LEGO and she keeps checking up on my lists on Brickset. As long as ebay pays the bills, she's fine with it.So all that being said, we still have a few sets from Christmas lying around. When I ask if they want to build, my son tells me we have too much LEGO and maybe we should get something different instead. I felt terrible until on his sick day today he pulled out every emergency vehicle and performed a multiple hour rescue. Now he's eying up creator house to torch and bring in the fire department.The kids love sets, but they still prefer free building. It's funny because when I suggested we go over to the store and fill a PAB box, my son tells me it's more fun when I surprise him with pieces and he has to figure out what to do with them. I really think the kids like free building because the whole family sits together with a big pile and we help each other with our ideas. Can't wait until they are a little older and we can play Creationary.I'll keep expanding the collection, we will all keep building, and when the kids get bored with it, I'll sell and pay for a year of college! Wait. No. When they are gone, then I'll have the time to MOC!

I came out of my dark age when my son was about 20 months old. At about 28 months, we built his first great vehicle set together, and he's been helping me build my sets and his sets ever since. He turned three a few months ago and can now follow instructions fairly well for builds like the great vehicles (though it takes encouragement to keep him focused). His collection is about ten City sets, almost all great vehicles-sized except for a couple like #60020.

I do worry that I've introduced him to LEGO too early. But he enjoys playing with it and has shown interest in building things of his own.

Unlike most here, my post-dark ages collection is quite miniscule (~60 sets) and I don't have any large exclusives. The largest sets I've built that he's had any experience with are #9474 Helm's Deep and #7965 Millennium Falcon. So in this regard, I don't think I've overwhelmed him too much with large sets such that he would take them for granted.

I do intend to slow down on adding sets to his City collection. When he first became interested in it, I would buy sets for no particular occasion. I'm now waiting for holidays or reward situations so he doesn't begin to take it for granted. Hopefully, he'll still be excited when he opens his first large set at Christmas.

My little 10 yo girl has grown up with me as a collector since she was born. There has always been a Toy Room, so she gets that aspect of it; Her poor dad is a bit off.

That being said, she loves Star Wars, LOTR, HP, and POTC. We have watched all the movies together, and she knows we cant put all the sets together until we do so. We have the seasonal sets, and open them during the seasons. We have modulars, and it's known the whole family is participating. All her small Friends get incorporated into her MOC Friends house, etc. If we dont have room yet for stuff...we dont build it yet.

Besides the building aspect (which she loves the process and spending time with me), she appreciates the HUNT. I guess it's the collector I've passed that down. She likes finding toys out in the wild, chasing the deal, and realizing that sometimes hunting things can be a bit more fun that the actual thing.

We have more Lego now than I ever had as a kid, but she knows that...and appreciates it. She just got the Dolphin Cruiser for Christmas, and she was floored. Her reaction to getting a set like that makes me a bit more hopeful that she's not part of the "Lego is all around me" philosophy. We make her wait for sets, so eventhough she is definitely spoiled....she knows not to ever expect it.

So far....so good. We'll see what happens when she stops thinking boys are gross, and I have to sit on the porch to scare them away.

@Jasor - I am already there with my 15 year-old daughter. Funny thing is that her boyfriends end up spending more time looking at the lego than paying attention to her. I've found a technique more efficient than sitting on the porch cleaning a shotgun!

Somewhat related. I had put quite some effort into trying to keep my boys' Lego sorted - not quite one-bag-per-element like my parts, but by colour etc. However I recently put most of it in a big box fully unsorted (with just minifig parts sorted) and they seem to play more, and are more creative.

I guess they just don't do the "I need that specific piece" thing that I do...

The reason being, they just had too much lego it was impossible to build any sets - I'd get a quarter of the way through a build and just not be able to find a particular part and have to give up! Now its been a breeze to build old sets, and now I know for sure that some parts are missing :( Hence a few orders to Bricklink lately...

I have quite another issue, our kids are ages 27 to 51 and they think we've totally lost our minds! None of them grew up with Lego as our income didn't stretch that far and though we've always had one collection or another only a couple of them have the 'collector gene'. They just all seem to wish we would begin acting as grown up as they are!

@Jasor - I am already there with my 15 year-old daughter. Funny thing is that her boyfriends end up spending more time looking at the lego than paying attention to her. I've found a technique more efficient than sitting on the porch cleaning a shotgun!

Classic dude approach....sway the girlfriend's old man by pretending to like what he likes. You been punk'd!